on individual deputies, but their position in the Assembly was
unshaken. By their divisions, and by means of occasional majorities,
especially by the uncertain and intermittent help of Danton,
Robespierre had carried important measures--the Revolutionary
Tribunal, the Committee of Public Safety, the employment of
commissaries from the Convention to enforce the levies in each
department. By a series of acceptable decrees in favour of the
indigent, he had established himself and his friends as the authors of
a new order of society, against the representatives of the middle
class. The people of Paris responded by creating an insurrectionary
committee to accomplish, by lawful pressure or otherwise, the purpose
of the deputation which had demanded the exclusion of the twenty-two.
On May 21 a commission of twelve was appointed to vindicate the
supremacy of the Convention against the municipality. The Girondins
obtained the majority. Their candidates received from 104 to 325
votes. No Jacobin had more than 98. It was their last parliamentary
victory. There was no legal way of destroying them. The work had to be
left to agitators like Marat, and the committee of insurrection. When
this came to be understood, the end was very near. The committee of
twelve, the organ of the Convention and of the moderate part of it,
arrested several of the most violent agitators. On May 26, Robespierre
summoned the people of Paris against the traitorous deputies. Next day
they appeared, made their way into the Convention, and stated their
demands. The men were released, and the commission of twelve was
dissolved. But on the 28th the Assembly, ashamed of having yielded
tamely to a demonstration which was not overwhelming, renewed the
commission, by 279 votes to 239.
A more decisive action was now resolved upon, and the Jacobins
prepared what they called a moral insurrection. They desired to avoid
bloodshed, for the tenure by which the Revolutionary Tribunal existed
was that it prevented the shedding of blood otherwise than by legal
forms. The Girondins, after expulsion, could be left to the enjoyment
of all the securities of a trial by jury. Meanwhile, the Girondin
scheme of Constitution was dropped, and five new members were
appointed to draw up a new one; and on May 30, for the first time, a
president was taken from the deputies of the Mountain. On May 31 the
insurrectionary masses invaded the Assembly. There was no actual
violence, and no resistance. The Girondins did nothing to defend their
cause, and their commission of twelve was again dissolved. The
deputies remained uninjured; but Roland fled, and his wife was sent to
prison. Two days later, June 2, the victory of moral force was
completed. The Tuileries were surrounded with cannon, the deputies
were not permitted to go out, and some of the Girondins agreed to
resign their seats in order to prevent an outbreak. It was called a
voluntary ostracism.
In the extreme weakness of the party Lanjuinais alone spoke and acted
with courage and decision. Legendre went up to the Tribune while he
was speaking, and threatened to kill him. As Legendre was a butcher,
Lanjuinais replied, "First decree that I am a bullock." When Chabot,
who had been a Capuchin, reviled the fallen statesmen, Lanjuinais
exclaimed, "The ancients crowned their victims with flowers, and the
priest did not insult them." This brave man lived through it all,
lived to witness the destruction of his enemies, to be the elect of
many departments, and to preside over the Chamber that decreed the
downfall of Napoleon. At the last moment, an obscure supporter of the
Girondins saw Danton, and called on him to interfere to save the
Convention from violence. Danton answered that he could do nothing,
for they had no confidence in him. It is a redeeming testimony. On the
evening of June 2 the more conspicuous Girondins, without being sent
to prison, were placed under arrest. In the capital, the victory of
the Jacobins was complete. They had conquered by the aid of the
insurrectionary committee, to which no man was admitted who did not
swear approval of the September murders.
Rout and extermination ensued upon the fall of the Gironde. They had
been scrupulous not to defend themselves by force, and preferred the
Republic to their party. While some remained as hostages in the power
of the foe, others went away to see what France would think of the
mutilation of its parliament. Their strength was in departments, and
in several departments the people were arming. In the west there was
no hope for them, for they had made the laws against which La Vendee
rebelled. They turned to the north. In Normandy the royalists were
forming an army, under the famous intriguer, Puisaye. Between such a
man and Buzot no understanding could subsist. There was no time for
them to quarrel, for the movement broke down at once. The people of
Normandy were quite indifferent. But there was one among them who had
spirit, and energy, and courage, and passion enough to change the face
of France. This extraordinary person was the daughter of M. d'Armont,
and she passed into the immortality of history as Charlotte Corday.
She was twenty-four. Her father was a royalist, but she had read
Raynal, and had the classical enthusiasm which was bred by Plutarch in
those as well as in other days. She had refused the health of Lewis
XVI., because, she said, he was a good man, but a bad king. She
preferred to live with a kinswoman, away from her own family, and her
mind was made up never to marry. Her bringing up had been profoundly
religious, but that influence seems to have been weakened in her new
home. There is no trace of it during the five days on which a fierce
light beats. In her room they found her Bible lying open at the story
of Judith. From the 31st of May she had learnt to regard Marat as the
author of the proscription of the Girondins, some of whom had appeared
at Caen in a patriotic halo. When the troops were paraded, on July 7,
those who volunteered for the march against Paris were so few that the
hope of deeds to be done by armed men utterly vanished. It occurred to
Charlotte that there may be something stronger than the hands and the
hearts of armed men. The Girondins were in the power of assassins, of
men against whom there was no protection in France but the dagger. To
take a life was the one way of saving many lives. Not a doubt ever
touched her that it is right to kill a murderer, an actual and
intending murderer, on condition of accepting the penalty. She told no
one of the resolution in her mind, and said nothing that was pathetic,
and nothing that was boastful. She only replied to Petion's clumsy
pleasantries: "Citizen, you speak like that because you do not
understand me. One day, you will know." Under a harmless pretext she
went to Paris, and saw one of the Girondin deputies. In return for
some civility, she advised him to leave at once for Caen. His friends
were arrested, and his papers were already seized, but he told her
that he could not desert the post of duty. Once more, she cried,
"Believe me, fly before to-morrow night!" He did not understand, and
he was one of the famous company that mounted the scaffold with
Vergniaud. Next morning, Saturday July 13, Charlotte purchased her
dagger, and called on Marat. Although he was in the bath where he
spent most of his time, she made her way in, and explained her
importunity by telling him about the conspirators she had seen in
Normandy. Marat took down their names, and assured her that in a few
days he would have them guillotined. At that signal she drove her
knife into his heart. When the idiotic accuser-general intimated that
so sure a thrust could only have been acquired by practice, she
exclaimed, "The monster! He takes me for a murderess." All that she
felt was that she had taken one life to preserve thousands. She was
knocked down and carried through a furious crowd to prison. At first
she was astonished to be still alive. She had expected to be torn in
pieces, and had hoped that the respectable inhabitants, when they saw
her head displayed on a pike, would remember it was for them that her
young life was given. Of all murderers, and of all victims, Charlotte
Corday was the most composed. When the executioner came for the
toilette, she borrowed his shears to cut off a lock of her hair. As
the cart moved slowly through the raging streets, he said to her, "You
must find the way long." "No," she answered, "I am not afraid of
being late." They say that Vergniaud pronounced this epitaph: "She has
killed us, but she has taught us all how to die."
After the failure in Normandy, of which this is the surviving episode,
Buzot and his companions escaped by sea to the Gironde. Having been
outlawed, on July 28, they were liable to suffer death without a
trial, and had to hide in out-houses and caverns. Nearly all were
taken. Barbaroux, who had brought the Marseillais, shot himself at the
moment of capture, but had life enough to be carried to the scaffold.
Buzot and Petion outlived their downfall for a year. Towards the end
of the Reign of Terror, snarling dogs attracted notice to a remote
spot in the south-west. There the two Girondins were found, and
recognised, though their faces had been eaten away. Before he went out
to die, Buzot placed in safety the letters of Madame Roland. Seventy
years later they came to light at a sale, and the suspected secret of
her life told in her _Memoirs_, but suppressed by the early editors,
was revealed to the world. She had been executed on November 10, 1793,
four days after the Duke of Orleans, and the cheerful dignity of her
last moments has reconciled many who were disgusted with her
declamatory emphasis, her passion, and her inhumanity. Her husband was
safe in his place of concealment near Rouen; but when he heard, he ran
himself through with a sword-cane. The main group had died a few days
earlier. Of 180 Girondin deputies, 140 were imprisoned or dispersed,
and 24 of these managed to escape; 73 were arrested at Paris, October
3, but were not brought to trial; 21, among whom were many
celebrities, went before the revolutionary tribunal, October 24, and a
week later they were put to death. Their trial was irregular, even if
their fate was not undeserved. With Vergniaud, Brissot, and their
companions the practice began of sending numbers to the guillotine at
once. There were 98 in the five months that followed.
During the agony of his party, Condorcet found shelter in a
lodging-house at Paris. There, under the Reign of Terror, he wrote
the little book on Human Progress, which contains his legacy to
mankind. He derived the leading idea from his friend Turgot, and
transmitted it to Comte. There may be, perhaps, a score or two dozen
decisive and characteristic views that govern the world, and that
every man should master in order to understand his age, and this is
one of them. When the book was finished, the author's part was played,
and he had nothing more to live for. As his retreat was known to one,
at least, of the Montagnards, he feared to compromise those who had
taken him in at the risk of their life. Condorcet assumed a disguise,
and crept out of the house with a Horace in one pocket and a dose of
poison in the other. When it was dark, he came to a friend's door in
the country. What passed there has never been known, but the fugitive
philosopher did not remain. A few miles outside Paris he was arrested
on suspicion and lodged in the gaol. In the morning they found him
lying dead. Cabanis, who afterwards supplied Napoleon in like manner,
had given him the means of escape.
This was the miserable end of the Girondin party. They were easily
beaten and mercilessly destroyed, and no man stirred to save them. At
their fall liberty perished; but it had become a feeble remnant in
their hands, and a spark almost extinguished. Although they were not
only weak but bad, no nation ever suffered a greater misfortune than
that which befell France in their defeat and destruction. They had
been the last obstacle to the Reign of Terror, and to the despotism
which then by successive steps centred in Robespierre.
XVIII
THE REIGN OF TERROR
The liberal and constitutional wave with which the Revolution began
ended with the Girondins; and the cause of freedom against authority,
of right against force was lost. At the moment of their fall, Europe
was in arms against France by land and sea; the royalists were
victorious in the west; the insurrection of the south was spreading,
and Precy held Lyons with 40,000 men. The majority, who were masters
in the Convention, had before them the one main purpose of increasing
and concentrating power, that the country might be saved from dangers
which, during those months of summer, threatened to destroy it. That
one supreme and urgent purpose governed resolutions and inspired
measures for the rest of the year, and resulted in the method of
government which we call the Reign of Terror. The first act of the
triumphant Mountain was to make a Constitution. They had criticized
and opposed the Girondin draft, in April and May, and only the new
declaration of the Rights of Man had been allowed to pass. All this
was now re-opened. The Committee of Public Safety, strengthened by the
accession of five Jacobins, undertook to prepare a scheme adapted to
the present conditions, and embodying the principles which had
prevailed. Taking Condorcet's project as their basis, and modifying it
in the direction which the Jacobin orators had pointed to in debate,
they achieved their task in a few days, and they laid their proposals
before the Convention on June 10. The reporter was Herault de
Sechelles; but the most constant speaker in the ensuing debate was
Robespierre. After a rapid discussion, but with some serious
amendments, the Republican Constitution of 1793 was adopted, on June
24. Of all the fruits of the Revolution this is the most
characteristic, and it is superior to its reputation.
The Girondins, by their penman Condorcet, had omitted the name of God,
and had assured liberty of conscience only as liberty of opinion. They
elected the executive and the legislative alike by direct vote of the
entire people, and gave the appointment of functionaries to those whom
they were to govern. Primary assemblies were to choose the Council of
Ministers, and were to have the right of initiating laws. The plan
restricted the power of the State in the interest of decentralisation.
The Committee, while retaining much of the scheme, guarded against the
excess of centrifugal forces. They elected the legislature by direct
universal suffrage, disfranchised domestic servants, and made the
ballot optional, and therefore illusory. They resolved that the
supreme executive council of twenty-four should be nominated by the
legislature from a list of candidates, one chosen by indirect voting
in each department, and should appoint and control all ministers and
executive officers; the legislature to issue decrees with force of law
in all necessary matters; but to make actual laws only under popular
sanction, given or implied. In this way they combined direct democracy
with representative democracy. They restricted the suffrage, abolished
the popular initiative, limited the popular sanction, withdrew the
executive patronage from the constituency, and destroyed secret
voting. Having thus provided for the composition of power, they
proceeded in the interest of personal liberty. The Press was to be
free, there was to be entire religious toleration, and the right of
association. Education was to become universal, and there was to be a
poor law; in case of oppression, insurrection was declared a duty as
well as a right, and usurpation was punishable with death. All laws
were temporary, and subject to constant revision. Robespierre, who had
betrayed socialist inclinations in April, revoked his earlier
language, and now insisted on the security of property, proportionate
and not progressive taxation, and the refusal of exemptions to the
poor. In April, an unknown deputy from the Colonies had demanded that
the Divinity be recognised in the preamble, and in June, after the
elimination of the Girondins, the idea was adopted. At the same time,
inverting the order of things, equality was made the first of the
Rights of Man, and Happiness, instead of Liberty, was declared the
supreme end of civil society. In point of spiritual quality, nothing
was gained by the invocation of the Supreme Being.
Herault proposed that a Grand Jury should be elected by the entire
nation to hear complaints against the government or its agents, and to
decide which cases should be sent for trial. The plan belonged to
Sieyes, and was supported by Robespierre. When it was rejected, he
suggested that each deputy should be judged by his constituency, and
if censured, should be ineligible elsewhere. This was contrary to the
principle that a deputy belongs to the whole nation, and ought to be
elected by the nation, but for the practical difficulty which compels
the division into separate constituencies. The end was, that the
deputies remained inviolable, and subject to no check, although the
oldest member, a man so old that he might very well have remembered
Lewis XIV., spoke earnestly in favour of the Grand Jury.
The Constitution wisely rescinded the standing offer of support to
insurgent nations, and renounced all purpose of intervention or
aggression. When the passage was read declaring that there could be no
peace with an invader, a voice cried, "Have you made a contract with
victory?" "No," replied Bazire; "we have made a contract with death."
A criticism immediately appeared, which was anonymous, but in which
the hand of Condorcet was easily recognised. He complained that judges
were preferred to juries, that functionaries were not appointed by
universal suffrage, that there was no fixed term of revision, that the
popular sanction of laws was reduced to a mere form. Condorcet
believed that nearly all inequality of fortune, such as causes
suffering, is the effect of imperfect laws, and that the end of the
social art is to reduce it. There were others who objected that the
Constitution did not benefit the poor. In regard to property, as in
other things, it was marked by a pronounced Conservatism. It was
adopted by a national vote of 1,801,918 to 11,610, and, with solemn
rites, was inaugurated on August 10. No term was fixed for it to come
into operation. The friends of Danton spoke of an early dissolution,
but the Convention refused to be dissolved, and the Constitution was
never executed. Although other acts of the legislature at that time
are still good law, French jurists do not appeal to the great
constitutional law of June 24 and August 10, 1793. In the course of
the autumn, October 10 and December 4, it was formally suspended, and
was never afterwards restored. France was governed, not by this
instrument, but by a series of defining enactments, which created
extraordinary powers, and suppressed opposition.
After the integrity of the Assembly, the next thing to perish was the
liberty of the Press. The journalists could not claim the sanctity
which had been violated in the representatives, and gave way. Marat
remained, and exercised an influence in Paris which his activity on
June 2 increased. He had his own following, in the masses, and his own
basis of power, and he was not a follower of either Danton or
Robespierre. By his share in the fall of the Girondins he became their
equal. When he died, the vacant place, in the Press and in the street,
was at once occupied by a lesser rival, Hebert. In a little time,
Hebert acquired enormous power. Marat's newspaper had seldom paid its
way; but Hebert used to print 600,000 copies of the _Pere Duchesne_.
Through his ally Chaumette, he controlled the municipality of Paris,
and all that depended from it. Through Bouchotte and Vincent, he
managed the War Office, with its vast patronage and command of money,
and distributed his journal in every camp. To a man of order and
precision like Robespierre, the personage was odious, for he was
anarchical and corrupt, and was the urgent patron of incapable
generals; but Robespierre could not do without his support in the
Press, and was obliged to conciliate him. Between Hebert and Danton
there was open war, and Danton had not the best of it. He had been
weakened by the overthrow of the Girondins whom he wished to save, and
was forced to abandon. In the Convention, he was still the strongest
figure, and at times could carry all before him. But when he lost his
seat on the governing Committee, and was without official information,
he was no match at last for Robespierre. All through the summer he was
evidently waning, whilst the Confederates, Chaumette, Hebert, and
Vincent, became almost invincible.
On the 10th of July the Committee of Public Safety, after acting as a
Committee of Legislation, was recomposed as an executive body. There
had been fourteen members, there were now nine. Barere had the highest
vote, 192; St. Just had only 126; and Danton was not elected. The
influence of Robespierre was supreme; he himself became a member, on a
vacancy, July 27. The fortunes of France were then at their lowest.
The Vendeans were unconquered, Lyons was not taken, and the Austrians
and English had broken through the line of fortresses, and were making
slowly for Paris. A few months saw all this changed, and those are the
earlier months of the predominance of Robespierre, with his three
powerful instruments, the Committee of Public Safety, the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and the Jacobin Club, which made him master of
the Convention. On July 27, the day before he was elected to the
Committee, an important change occurred. For the first time, an order
was sent from the Tuileries to the army on the frontier, in a quarter
of an hour. This was the beginning of the semaphore telegraph, and
science was laying hold of the Revolution. On August 1, the metrical
system was introduced, and the republican calendar followed; but we
shall speak of it in another connection.
In the middle of August, Prieur, an engineer officer, was elected to
the Committee, to conduct the business of war; but Prieur protested
that he was the wrong man, and advised them to take Carnot. Therefore,
August 15, very much against the wish of Robespierre, the organiser of
victory joined the government. The Hebertists had proposed that the
entire population should be forced into the army, more particularly
the richer class. Danton modified the proposal into something
reasonable, and on August 23, Carnot drew up the decree which was
called the _levee en masse_. It turned France into a nominal nation of
soldiers. Practically, it called out the first class, from eighteen to
twenty-five, and ordered the men of the second class, from twenty-five
to thirty, to be ready. It is to Danton and Carnot that France owed
the army which was to overrun the Continent; and by the end of the
year the best soldiers in the world, Hoche, Moreau, Massena,
Bonaparte, were being raised to command.
On August 9, an event occurred in the civil order which influenced the
future of mankind as widely as the creation of the French army. While
the Committee of Public Safety was busy with the Constitution, the
Committee of Legislation was employed in drawing up a Code of Civil
Law, which was the basis of the Code Napoleon. Cambaceres, who, with
the same colleagues, afterwards completed the work, presented it in
its first form on that day. Lastly, August 24, Cambon, the financial
adviser of the Republic, achieved the conversion and unification of
the Public Debt.
These were the great measures, undertaken and accomplished by the men
who accepted the leadership of Robespierre, in the first weeks of his
government. We come to those by which he consolidated his power.
At the beginning of September, the Committee was increased by the
admission of Billaud-Varennes, and of Collot d'Herbois, of whom one
afterwards overthrew Danton, and the other, Robespierre. The
appointment of Collot was a concession to Hebert. The same party were
persuaded that the hands of government were weak, and ought to be
strengthened against its enemies. Danton himself said that every day
one aristocrat, one villain, ought to pay for his crimes with his
head. Two measures were at once devised which were well calculated to
achieve that object. September 5, the Revolutionary Tribunal was
remodelled, and instead of one Revolutionary Tribunal, there were
four. And on September 17 the Law of Suspects was passed, enabling
local authorities to arrest whom they pleased, and to detain him in
prison even when acquitted. In Paris, where there had been 1877
prisoners on September 13, there were 2975 on October 20. On September
25, the mismanagement of the Vendean War, where even the Mentz
garrison had been defeated, led to a sharp debate in the Convention.
It was carried away by the attack of the Dantonists; but Robespierre
snatched a victory, and obtained a unanimous vote of confidence. From
that date to the 26th of July 1794, we count the days of his
established reign, and the Convention makes way for the Committee of
Public Safety, which becomes a Provisional government.